It’s hard to narrow down my favourite books this year, but if I MUST… The Booker shortlisted Darkmans (Nicola Barker, Fourth Estate) was the best book I have read in many years. Dark, layered, mysterious and surprisingly funny, it’s a novel about (seemingly) ordinary people in an ordinary English town haunted by history, embodied by cruel medieval jester John Scogin. Nancy Huston’s Fault Lines (Text), a multi-generational story about one American family with mysterious roots in World War II Europe, stunned me with its brilliance – it was a meticulously assembled puzzle of a story that slides perfectly into place with the last scenes. I also loved Deer Hunting With Jesus (Joe Baegant, Scribe), a clever and very human dissection of working class small-town America life that blends reportage and commentary. Maria Tumarkin’s pop philosophy/memoir Courage (MUP) showed her to be one of Australia’s most original and enjoyable writers and thinkers. And Sara Knox’s unconventional, forensically detailed World War II romance The Orphan Gunner (Giramondo), a book with significant echoes of Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, was my favourite unexpected discovery.
from The Big Issue, 26/12/07
